He dreamed of self-feeding solar house. So he built A-frame greenhouse home

Twenty years ago, Anders Solvarm put up a greenhouse just to keep the rain off a log home he was building, but it worked so well he made it permanent, turning the shelter into a house grown inside its own greenhouse.

Nearly two decades living under glass gave him a new idea: build a house designed from the ground up to be part of its greenhouse, rather than the other way around. The Atri Nature House is an all-wood A-frame that echoes the slope of the mountain and the trees around it.

Both houses were inspired by the Swedish architect Bengt Werne, who in 1976 built the world's first "Nature House." Anders' first build became only the second one ever constructed, and it's modernized: it's entirely off-grid, not even grid-tied, treating the house itself as a solar collector where every bit of sunlight is meant to feed a plant or a person.

Fruit trees, grapes, and Mediterranean plants that have no business surviving a Nordic winter thrive inside, buying the family what they call a fifth season.

Nothing goes to waste. Both greywater and sewage filter down through a hidden wall packed with worms, volcanic rock, and plant roots, trickling from one bed to the next until the water comes out clean and the plants come out fed.

It's a house that produces its own power, its own warmth, and a remarkable amount of its own food, all from a system that looks, at a glance, like ordinary landscaping.